Revenge
by Alexxus Anderson
Summary: Lenneth Ascher is an old woman with a few grudges. Here is the story of what she does when she feels it is time to collect what's owed.


Revenge

A woman, long black hair, tailored business suit, wearing a scarlet silk lined trench coat sits outside a café with a cell phone in front of her as she sips from a demitasse cup. Her face is accentuated by a pair of wire-rimmed smoky sunglasses. On the table before her are the remains of the _New York Times_, primarily just the crossword and the comics.

Her phone rings, a tinny sound, bringing her eyes down from studying the New York skyline. She reaches for the phone, manicured and very red nails closing around the offending object. It opens, a soft click accompanied by the tinkle of a set of silver bracelets around her wrist.

"Yes," her voice is soft, but authoritative.

"The man you're paying me to follow has received your invitation. Everything is going as you planned."

"Good. You're finished. You've received your ticket and travel dossier?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm gonna take a vacation to Mexico for a while."

"Good, your flight leaves this evening. Don't miss it."

"Understood." The man on the other end paused for a moment before continuing. "Can I ask why you had me do all this and why you want this guy?"

"He owes me something very precious. I have every intention of collecting."

"He must owe you something major for you to go through all this to get him."  
"Oh, he does, Mr. Sanders. Have a good time in Mexico. Give your wife and your mistress big kisses for me."

Jonathan Sanders hung up the payphone from which he had called his employer. Then he picked up the receiver again and wiped it down as he had been instructed. Fixing his gloves on his hands, he stepped away from the phone and walked toward his car. He had done what he was supposed to do. He had found the guy, done the background check, and finally delivered the message as he had been instructed by the woman who had simply appeared in his office one night dressed like a modern femme fatale. She had waved enough money in his face to more than cover his pony debts, and just about every other debt he had ever gotten. Then she had said that it was just a down payment. If he followed her directions exactly, she would double his money and send him out of the U.S. when he was done. Helping her meant never having to reveal to his darling Martha or his darling Shanice that he was in way over his head to the mob. And she wasn't even asking him to do anything illegal.

Climbing into his car, John Sanders imagined how much Martha would enjoy a tour of Mexico City.

Lenneth Essex got up from her place at the café, leaving the crossword unfinished. On the table, she left her waiter a ten-dollar tip for her coffee and newspaper. Then she simply walked away. Several blocks down, she passed a trashcan and dropped the cellphone that she had been using into it. It was no longer necessary and the sound it made tended to make her grind her teeth. Turning, she took a shortcut through the park back to her hotel, enjoying the spangling sunshine on her skin and the lessening of the taste of car emissions in her mouth.

Both of her young compatriots were out about their own business when she entered the penthouse apartment that she shared with two young men. Both Nathaniel and Sebastian were surely busy, Nathan busy sleeping and Sebastian busy sleeping with someone. But that left Lenneth to her own, rather insidious devices. Better they didn't see what she was going to do to the man she had 'invited' to come visit her.

20 years earlier, Lenneth had lived with her husband in a town that was both small and isolated. Andre, the man she loved quite dearly had died of poison and been buried there, leaving a pregnant Lenneth to have their baby alone. The then 80-year-old woman had weathered the loss of her husband quite well considering. She did not fare as well when her former employers came calling to protest her rather hasty resignation. They had left her for dead out in the snow while they walked away with her baby, the little girl she had carried in her body. Despite the intervening time and the massive injuries she had received that night, Lenneth could still remember the face of the man who had kicked over her body and shot her once more in the face. The rest of his troop were equally responsible for the sad state she ended up in, but he was the one she had chosen to donate the pounds of flesh to pay for all of their sins. He was going to die tonight, but how was up to whatever mercy she was feeling. Of course, mercy was dependent on her ability to feel compassion for his suffering. While she was normally a compassionate woman, she could still see quite clearly the blood smeared face of her daughter and hear the fading mental voice that said she was moving away. Then a gun barrel obscured her vision, the very barrel that turned her world a shiny black punctuated by red flashes of pain. That gun had darkened her vision for several months.

It had taken her the better part of three years to heal from the wounds of that single night. She had then set out to ruin the very people who had attempted to kill her, the employers she had served with all the loyalty a being who knows it will out-live those in power could. She toppled their corporations, bought up their companies, and out right murdered those who sought to do the same to her. Her quest for revenge had materially enriched her, making her perhaps one of the wealthiest people in the world. Yet there was speculation that she didn't really exist. After all, the Lenneth Ascher who was doing all the busy and amassing a fortune was born in 1900. However, whenever she was represented it was by a woman who didn't look as if she had seen the high side of 25 yet. Nor were there ever any interviews granted with this money matron. Her 'secretary,' as the younger woman had been dubbed, always sent reporters packing and quickly. So quickly that sometimes they returned to their home office and irate editor sure they had never been sent to get the interview in the first place. Meanwhile, Ascher Industries continued to amass a substantial fortune, mostly legitimately.

The apartment telephone rang, a much more melodious sound than her discarded cell phone.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Essex," the voice of the hotel's shift manager greeted her.

"Yes?"

"There is a young man here. He says that you have a lunch date with him. Should I send him up along with the menu?"

"Yes, please do that."

"Very good, madam. I'll do exactly that." The polite click from his end signaled the end of the conversation. The hotel and its staff took her privacy very seriously, mostly because she tipped well and had no heart for infractions.

Lenneth greeted her visitor barefoot in a pair of shorts and a shirt both black silk. Johnny whistled appreciatively as he removed his indoor sunglasses.

"You get better looking every time I see you."

"I see someone has taught the young man to flatter."

"Must you constantly remind me that you're 104 years old and look like a super model? We both know I won't age as well."

She turned away from him, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"You don't know that. I may just decide that I feel like freezing your age like I've done mine. Maybe I'd like to keep you around forever." Lenneth stopped in front of the glass doors leading out onto the terrace and into the pool area.

"But let's not be depressing. I have enough things on my mind more pressing than your problem with aging." She looked into the silver eyes of his reflection. "Let's go swimming. Then we'll have lunch."

Johnny gestured at the business suit that he had worn. He had thought that this was going to be a normal date, the kind were they went out and the only water involved was in the glasses on the table or the possible afternoon shower.

"I didn't bring a suit."

"Yes, you did. The one you got on your first birthday. Now stop dawdling." She stepped through the open doors and disappeared from his sight. Once Johnny managed to control his blush (which was all the way down to the bone) and his body's extremely carnal reaction (to the idea of seeing this particular old woman naked) he followed her out to the pool area.

The old striking clock struck the hour of six p.m., and was the only face looking down on the two lovebirds curled together in Lenneth's king-size bed, a whiskey decanter and martini fixings on the nightstand close at hand.

"I'm not sure we should have done this, this is our first date after all."

"Shut-up and enjoy this, Johnny, I am."

"It's just that we don't know each other. We're rushing things just a little."

"Hmmm…" was her reply as she moved to lay her head in the curve of his shoulder. "You weren't complaining when we started."

"I'm not complaining now. I just don't think its right to sleep with a woman on the first date." He turned his head and buried his lips in her hair.

"You're hiding something."

He mumbled a confused sound into the top of her head.

"I can smell it. The way your scent just changed. You're trying to hide something from me. And as if that wasn't enough, your heart-rate just jumped and so did your body temp." She pulled away from him to look him in the eyes. "What are you trying not to say?"

"Nothing," he reached for the half-filled martini glass he had discarded some time earlier.

"Which is it, my age or my fortune? What are you afraid of, the fact that I'm old enough to be your great-grandmother or that I'm richer than any person you can name?" She rolled out of bed and grabbed up her robe from the chair next to the bed. Slipping her arms into it, she said,

"Maybe you should get your clothes."

"I didn't mean to offend you." He put the glass down and sat up in the bed.

Hands on her hips, she looked at him with eyes that were at the same time cold and weary.

"Johnny, understand this. I'm older than everyone I know. I'm richer than nearly everyone I can name. Neither of these things have anything to do with me sleeping with you. And if they are what stands in your way, then I'll always be too much for you. Better you get your things and don't come back then you let them affect how you treat me."

"So I guess I'm just supposed to forget that I don't have anything to offer you?" He crawled off the other side of the bed and approached her. "Before I got accepted to the school and met you, I was literally a starving music teacher. I was waiting for my eviction notice so I could go crawling back to my family. Then you happened to me. It's all too good to be true. Maybe I'm just looking for a reason for it not to be, for a reason it can't be real."

"Johnny," she opened her arms to him and he came to her, wrapping his arms around her. "This is real. New, maybe a little quick for an old-fashioned man like you, but very real. You have to believe that." She kissed him on the cheek. "Now get your things and go."

"But…" he stepped back, his confusion darkening his eyes.

"No buts. You think we're going a little fast, right? Then that means you don't sleep over on the first day, right?"

He just watched her; his eyes fixed and a little glazed, as she walked into the bathroom and shut the door. Trapped by his own excuses.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Lenneth was unsurprised to find Johnny gone. She had told him to leave. But the card on the nightstand, propped up against his martini glass, did cause her to arch one eyebrow. Picking it up, she turned it over to see what it said.

_My apologies. I'll try to behave better next time_ was penned in a serviceable block print. She smiled, settling it down across the top of the glass.

Alexander Borden was a stately man nearing the magical age of 55, too old to really be chasing anyone outside of the old folks' home. It might have been true if he looked his age. He still managed a rugged 40 under close scrutiny. But still the message brought to him by the Private Eye had been something unexpected.

It said in a delicately done calligraphy that he was meant to meet a young lady wearing a red dress at the bar of a particular hotel. That lady would lead him to where he would meet the sender.

The whole situation shouted set-up to the trained officer, which was why he had holstered a simple revolver under his suit jacket and a .22 was strapped to his ankle. If this turned out badly, at least he would have a chance to extract himself from the situation with all his limbs intact.

So here he was. He stepped into the bar area, scanning for the promised lady in red. There she was, her back to him, holding a whispered conversation with the bartender. The young man bartender must have noticed him looking because he moved away quickly and went back to polishing glasses. He walked up behind her and politely cleared his throat.

"Excuse me," he began.

"Alexander Borden," she finished for him, turning in her seat. A small thrill went up her spine as she took in his widened eyes. "So nice to see you again." Getting up, she grabbed his arm in a casual-looking but strong grip. "My employer is just dying to me you."

Every instinct he had was gibbering that he was being lead by a creature that couldn't possibly still exist. He had shot her in the face. She was supposed to be dead. Granted they never found a body when they searched the area, but that didn't mean she was supposed to walk back into his life, 20 years later. Even as his mind denied her existence, his body was all too well aware of her presence as she led the way across the lobby toward the elevators. There was no denying the grip that barely seemed to wrinkle his jacket fabric but could have bent metal. He made one attempt to get away, which was met with a look, that was one-third amusement mixed with two-thirds contempt.

"You want to walk out of here this evening, Alex," she whispered in his ear as if she were about to kiss him. "You won't do that again. But good behavior won't guarantee your safety either." A sheen of sweat broke out on his skin at her mouth so close to his skin. He had seen the aftermath of one of her kisses, skin that seemed to decay immediately, people who died in agony clutching at the effected area. Then she moved away again, leaving him with his visions of how he would die.

The paneling of the elevator slide shut, closing them off for the time it took the car to reach her penthouse apartment again. His sweat was soaking his collar and armpits when the door finally opened with a whoosh. Then she stepped away from him, beckoning him to follow her. The momentary thought of getting the elevator to shut and escaping her passed through his mind like a phantom. Then he stepped out of the elevator. If she had found him once, she would simply find him again. No amount of name changing would change that. Alexander Borden followed Lenneth Essex into her apartment. The showdown would be short.

At 7:30 p.m. Alexander Borden smashed into the top of a SUV parked in front of the hotel. Those assembled; valets, people hailing cabs, the owners of said vehicle, could only look up to the sky with the collective thought that maybe it was indeed raining men.

Lenneth had, with a smile and a fondly spoken good-bye, thrown him over the railing that separated her terrace from the empty space of New York air. Perhaps his death was unnecessary, but the satisfaction; felt as a small fire in her gut, and the closure; a chapter of her life concluded with a firmly written 'The End,' made throwing Alex, a human being she considered more a waste of space and an affront to her dignity than a threat, more than worth it.

Mentally she forced her body to mimic the chemical responses of hysterics. She would need the shaken up and panicky sounding voice to make her story more believable. She hurried, without a terribly marked change in pace, to call the police.

"9-1-1 Emergency…"

"Oh my God, Alex just jumped!"

_Revenge has all the attributes of good whiskey. It is best well aged and just slightly cold. _

–Lenneth Ascher Essex


End file.
